I remember when I was five. I was on a school bus and I was walking to the front of it. It was moving of course and I started thinking. If im moving toward the front of the bus, that means im going faster than the bus. Being five years old I was like HELL YES!!! Im out walking a speeding bus. Years later I find out this is a theory. I cant recall the name of it. One of Einsteins deals Im sure. Dont ask why I posted this. It seemed odd to me.
Nope; you don't need Einstein for this one; Newton works just fine Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Yes, relative to the ground, you were going faster than the bus! Of course, that's with the help of the bus. Since both the buses speed and your walking speed are far below speeds where relativity needs to be invoked, your speed, relative to the ground, was u+ v where u is your walking speed relative to the bus and v is the busses speed relative to the ground. Relativity requires a slight correction to that: it would be (u+ v)/(sqrt(1+ uv/c^2)). Of course for anything less than u and v= millions of meters per second, vu/c^2 is so small it is negligible but if u and v are close to c, that denominator prevents the "sum" from ever being larger than c.
Actually, it was Galileo who first realised that you could walk faster than the bus with no need to put in any extra effort than if you were walking on the ground as normal.
